Valentine's Deliveries

Valentine's Cookies all bagged up and ready to hang on a few neighbor's doorknobs. R worked really hard on the cards. The one red animal you can see with long, long shaky legs is a "baby fawn," she says.


The lady across the street gave her a very sweet Valentine with a kitten on it. This is her thank-you.


Heading out with Daddy for the deliveries!


This is the email Valentine we sent to my family.




She opened her present from Grandma and Grandpa B. She named them Jewelie-Jewel and Diamond. The tattoos were inside one of her valentines from school.

Happy Valentine's Day

Valentines for school, each one laboriously glued and stickered and signed with her name.





Cookies for the staff & teachers & a few neighbors:



and finally, today's bento lunch:

February 12 Bento

The plain yogurt is sweetened with agave & vanilla. She helped me make the gyoza. She was excited to put them in her lunchbox this morning.


She got ready for school a little early this morning, and made a picture of herself with her friends. Everyone in her drawings gets elaborate earrings lately. The sun is heart-shaped! No wonder, with all the valentines she has been making. Yesterday's snow is nearly melted.

Sugar snow

The side of our house, before leaving for school this morning. Sparkling "sugar snow," that will probably be melted by late afternoon.



Looking out from the kitchen window this morning. Azalea, cyclamen, chives.

Bento lunch February 11

This is a closeup of the yaki onigiri, made with brown rice. The bird's eye is a tiny piece of nori. She loves these, and I'm so happy that she's eating brown rice.



Today's lunchbox note--signed by Daddy too!

New Lunchbox 2-10

Four days into full-day kindergarten, the handle on her old lunchbox broke. This is the new insulated lunch bag, and I also got a thermos and drink bottle. The bento is from Ichiban Kan in San Francisco.



Inside it looks like this today:

Bento lunch February 6

Bento February 5

Inside:



Outside:

2-4-Bento

inside:


outside:

Bento lunch for kindergarten, 2-3-09

First Post

February, 2009. This month, my 5 year old starts kindergarten full time, and I start a blog. She is starting halfway through the year, because she kept begging us to go full-day. She said it would be "like having a play date all the time." So far, she likes it.

This is our life in our new (since June '08) house, just south of Denver.



Halloween '08. I didn't cut Papa Bear's eye holes big enough, but he was a good sport.



This is my R., feeding a lorikeet at the zoo last week. She is an Animal Girl. She wants to be a vet when she grows up.



She even likes goats.



This is my favorite baby picture of her. She was quite a baby. She kind of knew it all already. She was self-possessed and had a strong sense of her own dignity, but then she would lose it in epic colicky episodes. She had night terrors where she would stand up in her crib and scream and point into a dark corner until the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. It was always unsettling to catch her looking at you like this.



Here is the note she wrote to me last week, to say thank you for sending her to school full-day. Not bad for a five year old, sounding it out on her own!



Here she is with my Dad in December, this past Christmas. They have the same sense of humor but they like to talk about serious things too.



This is her best little school friend. They go to Catholic school and love to have free days where they don't have to wear their uniforms.




Now that R. is full day, I pack her a lunch for the first time. We used to sit at the kitchen table together while she ate leftovers from her dinged-up Peter Rabbit plate. I read that Japanese mothers pack elaborate bentos to show their love for their children. I don't think I will ever be making lifelike anime characters out of pepper strips and colored bonito flakes, but I love to make it healthy and appealing for her to eat. I miss her in the afternoons. Last week I volunteered in the art teacher's room, and she said "Oh yes, I cried the first time I ate lunch by myself."

I started taking pictures of her lunches, and it made me want to start a blog.